Chapter 4 - The Threat That Changed the Rules
I showed Rachel the message.
She photographed the screen immediately.
"Do not respond."
"I wasn't planning to."
Emily began crying.
"This is why I didn't call you."
I sat beside her.
"You didn't cause this."
"If I hadn't taken the card—"
"They were already hurting you."
She looked down.
I put my hand over hers.
"The card didn't create the truth."
"It revealed it."
Rachel requested federal protection for the evidence and informed hospital security about the threat.
Within an hour, two federal agents arrived.
Special Agent Naomi Brooks introduced herself first.
Her partner was Special Agent Marcus Lane.
Neither appeared impressed by my rank.
I appreciated that.
They cared about facts.
Rachel explained the evidence.
Calvin explained the forensic process.
Emily described the confinement.
Claire described the fake transfer.
The patrol officers described Captain Monroe's conduct.
Agent Brooks listened to everything.
Then she asked Emily one question.
"How many people had access to the Blue Room?"
Emily thought carefully.
"Margaret."
"Ethan."
"Brandon."
"And Charles."
I had not heard that name all night.
Charles Prescott was Ethan's father.
He rarely appeared at family gatherings.
Officially, he had retired from the family's real estate company because of heart problems.
Unofficially, Emily said, everyone still answered to him.
"Where is Charles now?" Brooks asked.
Emily shook her head.
"I don't know."
Rachel searched the public records available to her.
Charles had supposedly flown to Switzerland four days earlier.
Agent Lane looked unconvinced.
"If he knew the card was gone, he may have left before Emily escaped."
Calvin continued examining the files.
Then he found a directory hidden inside an image archive.
Its title contained no words.
Only numbers.
314.
Emily stared at it.
"March fourteenth."
"What happened March fourteenth?" I asked.
She closed her eyes.
"That was the night Ethan told me I would never leave him."
The folder contained audio.
Emily's voice came first.
"I'm done."
Then Ethan.
"You don't get to decide that."
A chair scraped.
Emily screamed.
My hands became fists.
Agent Brooks noticed.
I forced them open.
Margaret's voice entered the recording.
"Stop crying."
"Nobody believes women who sound hysterical."
Another man's voice followed.
Charles Prescott.
"You should have learned something from Samantha."
Emily beside me went completely still.
On the recording, she whispered.
"What does Samantha have to do with me?"
Charles laughed.
"She also thought evidence made her powerful."
The audio stopped.
No one in the room spoke.
Agent Brooks broke the silence.
"Emily, did you ever see Samantha after she left the Prescotts?"
Emily shook her head.
Calvin searched deeper.
One file was corrupted.
He recovered part of it.
A photograph slowly appeared.
An isolated cabin.
Trees.
A dirt road.
And Samantha Reed standing on the porch.
Alive.
The metadata placed the photograph in North Carolina.
The date was only nine days old.
Rachel leaned forward.
"She's alive."
Calvin nodded.
"Or she was nine days ago."
Another recovered file appeared.
A GPS coordinate.
Agent Lane copied it.
Brooks immediately called her office.
But before she finished speaking, Rachel's second phone rang.
She answered.
Her expression changed.
"What do you mean?"
She listened.
"Send it to me."
Rachel hung up.
"What happened?" I asked.
She turned her phone around.
A breaking-news story had just appeared on a Charlotte media site.
The headline read:
PROMINENT PRESCOTT FAMILY TARGETED BY UNSTABLE ARMY COLONEL AND TROUBLED DAUGHTER.
Emily went pale.
The article claimed she suffered from severe psychiatric problems.
It claimed she had attacked Ethan.
It claimed I had threatened hospital personnel.
It claimed the memory card had been stolen.
And beneath the article was a photograph.
Me standing outside Emily's hospital room.
The picture had been taken from inside Mercy General.
Agent Brooks stared at it.
"Someone inside this hospital is feeding them information."
Then Claire's phone rang.
She listened for less than ten seconds.
Her face changed.
May you like
She slowly lowered the phone.
"I've been suspended."
